They just had a number of off year elections in the US. Pundits are analysing the results in New Jersey and Virginia governor races and the Congress by-election (or whatever it is called over there) to draw inferences about President Obama’s popularity with the voters.

Let’s leave that analysis to the Americans and think about the upcoming by-election in Bhola-3. In the absence of credible opinion poll (what happened to the Daily Star Nielsen poll?), this will be a good guide to the current political trends in Bangladesh.

I do some aggregate number crunching in what follows.  BNP may well reclaim the seat, but the magnitude of the victory will point to how (un)popular the AL government is.  But this is based on no knowledge whatosever about the local issues.  Anyone in the house from Bhola to enlighten us?

This seat was won by Major Hafiz in 1991, 1996, and 2001. In 1991, he ran as an independent and won 44.9% votes. His nearest rival was from the Awami League, who won 32.3%. Nazrul Islam, another independent, came 3rd with 18.3%. In 1996, Hafiz ran as a BNP candidate and picked up 59%. In that election, Jamaat ran a candidate, grabbing 2.3%. AL nominated Nazrul Islam, who took 36.6%. In 2001, Hafiz won 65.8% against the AL’s heavy-weight candidate Tofayel Ahmed’s 33.7%. Nazrul Islam came 3rd with Jatiya Party (Ershad) ticket, getting 0.3%.

Hafiz lost the seat in 2008. Running with dhaner sheesh, Hafiz got 45.7% against 52.8% taken by AL’s Major Jashim. But then it turned out that Major Jashim’s candidature was illegal under electoral law. Hence the prospect of by-election here.

So, what could we expect from this by-election? Hafiz needs a swing of 3.5 percentage points to win Bhola-3. Is this possible? I don’t know anything about the local politics in Bhola to answer that question. I do, however, note the following.

1. In a densely populated poverty-stricken country like Bangladesh, the incumbent always starts out in a disadvantage.

2. After accounting for the AL-JP and BNP-JI alliances, it seems that Hafiz’s vote share has a floor of about 45%, while the best that AL could muster was slightly over the 50% mark (52.8% in December).

3. It also seems that Hafiz has been much stronger in this electorate than BNP (with or without alllies) has been nationally. For example, in 2001, the four-party alliance bagged about 46% of votes nationally, while in 2008, the alliance received about 38%. This is presumably why he was taken back to the party despite being the ‘chairman’ of the ‘reformist’ BNP during the emergency.

4. One could expect a very energised campaign by BNP in this rather marginal seat (swings of 5 points is pretty common in Bangladesh).

None of this predicts a win for Maj Hafiz. As I said, I don’t know anything about the local politics. For all I know, the following could be true.

5. Maybe Hafiz is very controversial — he did see a 20-point drop between 2001 and 2008, much bigger than BNP’s national drop of 8 points.

6. Maybe sections of the local BNP is dead set against him, perhaps because of his ‘reformist’ record.

7. Surely AL will throw everything at retaining the seat. Of course, everything may well mean ugly things like ballot stuffing, intimidation, and other sundry offences that go under the name rigging. Readers can be forgiven for thinking about the infamous Magura by-election. How will we know if this happens? If Hafiz’s vote drops below 45%, that would be a pretty strong sign.

Finally, a narrow win by Hafiz won’t necessarily mean AL has lost popularity.  Given its performance in the 1990s, if AL cracked 40% here then that could very well be taken as voter satisfaction.   

So much for electoral arithmetic.  Can anyone share some grassroot insight here?

(Cross-posted at UV)

Data from New Age’s excellent election portal.  I couldn’t appreciate how fabulous it was in December because of bandwidth problem.  Well done guys. 

Rear Window is a 1954 Hollywood classic.  Set in Manhattan, James Stewart plays a photographer nursing a broken leg.  He sits bored in his Greenwich Village apartment, passing the time by spying on his neighbors — a dancer who likes to practice in her underwear (it’s summer), a woman who lives by herself, a musician working at his piano, and several married couples, including a salesman with a bedridden wife.  As the movie progresses, Stewart, his girlfriend Grace Kelly, and us the viewers, start suspecting that the salesman has killed his wife.  But we never know until the very end whether there really was a murder, because all the unusual things raising suspicion had reasonable, innocent explanations.  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the movie is considered as one of the best thrillers ever made. 

I have often wondered what would happen if the movie was set in today’s Dhaka, where life is every bit as hectic and alienating as it is in 1950s (or even present day) Manhattan.  Dear reader, if you were sitting with a binocular in the balcony of your Uttara/Mohammadpur/Poribagh/Shantinagar flat, and saw suspicious going ons in the neighbouing building, what would you do?

This is obviously a rhetorical question.  But let’s think about the underlying social dynamics here.  In a small town, or in a suburb, the stylised social dynamics is that most people know what goes on in others’  lives.  If someone’s wife is missing all of a sudden, people notice.  It is difficult to conceal a murder in such a setting.  In a big city, this isn’t possible.  People might not even know the neighbour, let alone if someone is murdered.

Take the Awami League lawmaker Barrister Tapash for example.  It turns out that he lived in the same Gulshan building as the brother of Major Dalim (infamous for his role in the 15 August massacre that killed Tapash’s parents).  Did Tapash and Swapan, Dalim’s brother, know each other?  When did Tapash move into the building?  Would he have known that Dalim’s brother was living there?  Would he care? 

Tapash and Swapan live in the rich end of the town.  What about the solid middle class and lower middle class neighbourhoods.  What about the residents of buildings described here?  Do they know who their neighbours are?  Would they know if the khalamma or the bhabi in the neighbouring flat goes missing? 

I have wondered about these questions, but have no answer myself.  I don’t know Dhaka well enough to answer.  But my family and friends who live in Dhaka don’t seem to have any clear answer either.  Some of them have lived in the same building for decades, and tell me that they used to know the neighbours well, but not any more.  Others have moved into their buildings more recently, and have no idea nor interest in neighbours. 

Of course, this lack of interest in one’s neighbour’s affairs need not be a bad thing.   This shows a growing appreciation of privacy, a better recognition of an individual’s right to be left alone.  But there are flipsides.  In Rear Window a possible murderer could have gotten away because no one cared about their neighbour.  The same could be happening in Dhaka.

In fact, it’s not even certain that this kind of thing can’t happen in small town or village.  Last year, an Austrian guy was found to have repeatedly raped his daughter for nearly two decades in his basement.  This happened in a small town, and no one knew.  And this doesn’t happen just in the capitalist, materialist west.  As Rumi bhai discusses here, a serial killer haunted rural Bangladesh without anyone realising what was going on.  It seems that it’s not just Manhattan, even in rural Bangladesh one might not know much about their neighbours!

Let’s think about something else.  Those of you who had moved to a big western city from desh as a young person would know the sense of alienation and depression that comes from being alone for the first time in your life.  When someone moves from a village in Gaibandha or Golachipa to Dhaka, wouldn’t they feel exactly the same way?  In the urban jungles of the west, there is a dozen way you can get over your blues.  What does the young person in Dhaka do? 

Bangladesh’s economy has been growing by around 6 per cent a year, doubling every 12 years.  Per capita income is doubling every two decades.  It is by no means a stretch to say that most Bangladeshis today are better off than their ancestors at any point in the past few centuries.  But this also means that our social fabric is ripped asunder.  In Rumi bhai’s words: the era that Rasu Kha ushers in front of us, is a bad era.

But surely we are not the first people to have gone through this social change.  Jack the Ripper stalked the alleys of East London, not far from the Banglatown, in the 1890s.  His preys had living conditions that were certainly no better than those of Rasu Kha’s victims.  In the late 1960s, a large scale social science research found what were considered ‘Bengali religious and moral values’ simply didn’t exist in the slums of Kolkata (source: Geoffrey Moorehouse’s Calcutta).

The question for our social scientists and activists is how we can learn from the experience of those who went before us.

(Crossposted at UV)

Dr Akbar Ali Khan and Lt Gen Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury have many things in common.  Both reached the top in their respective fields.  Dr Khan became the country’s top bureaucrat, and is a rare public servant who enjoyed confidence of both Awami League and BNP.   After a distinguished career that included commanding the Bangladeshi contingent in the first Gulf War, Lt Gen Chowdhury also rose to the top of his profession. 

In November 2006, both joined Iajuddin Ahmed’s caretaker government.  At that time, the partisan media dubbed both of them as favourites of Tarique Rahman and the dreaded Hawa Bhaban.   And then in December that year, they both resigned (with two other advisors), saying Iajuddin wasn’t serious about a fair election.  Their actions led credence to the fear of election rigging.  The four advisors were idolised by the media.  And after 1/11, both Dr Khan and Lt Gen Chowdhury were appointed chairmen of agencies that could, in theory, be enablers of fundamental reform.

With the election of the Awami League, both of them found it difficult to stay in their positions.  Both eventually resigned.  No one expects the agencies they led after 1/11 to make any difference to anything.

Even though both had to resign, one of them is a hero in my book, the other a mere has been.  Some of what these two distinguished gentlemen have in common symbolise what has been wrong with Bangladesh.  However, comparing what they don’t have in common perhaps point to how we can improve things. 

What do they not have in common?  Where do they differ most?

Look at what Lt Gen Chowdhury did after 1/11?  As head of the Anti Corruption Commission, he talked tough about uprooting corruption.  In this he wasn’t alone.  Serving and retired generals with first names beginning with M also talked tough about corruption.  A lot of people, including the current and past prime ministers and their family members, were rounded up, tortured, and framed in kangaroo courts.  It soon became clear that tThe anti-corruption drive was a front for a political game. 

Was Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury part of this game?  I don’t know.  But if he refused to be part of the game Iajuddin was playing to rig the election in BNP’s favour, then why did he not resign when it became clear that the 1/11 regime had no interest in tackling corruption, and was using him as a pawn in their game?  And if he thought he could serve the public interest by staying on, why did he resign when AL came in? 

I don’t know the answers to these questions.  But I do know that the anti-corruption drive was a monumental waste.  It resulted in an investment slump in 2007 and 2008, when for the first time in years investment fell relative to GDP.  It led to massive chaos in bureaucracy.  And for all this, it did nothing to improve the day-to-day governance in Bangladesh. 

Dr Chowdhury was asked to head the Regulatory Reform Commission.  The body was supposed to streamline rules, sub-rules, regulations, and acts that regulate trade and commerce in the country. 

How important was this task?  Consider this: it takes eight months to register a property, and nearly four years to enforce a contract, in Bangladesh.  This chart compares Bangladesh against a bunch of similar countries. 

Dear reader, you heard so much about how bad corruption is in Bangladesh.  Did you know about these regulatory burdens?  It’s these cumbersome regulations and red tapes that fosters corruption in Bangladesh (I wrote about this here).  When Chowdhury sahib was talking a tough game on corrupption, Khan sahib was actually doing meaningful, feasible work against it. 

The two approaches they took under the 1/11 regime differ a lot, and provide clues to how we can fix Bangladesh.  ACC headed by a general will yield nothing.  RRC headed by a bureaucrat might. 

I say might, because it is the politicians who decide whether they want change.  Dr Khan resigned last week.  In this interview, he makes his reasons clear (and has many interesting things to say about food security).  

AL isn’t serious about reforming microeconomic regulations that support corruption.  And its rhetoric about food security is wrongheaded and is likely to prove counterproductive.  But it is the legitimately elected government.  If we want to improve things in Bangladesh, we have to engage this government, and the opposition (yes, BNP).  We need to raise the issues, discuss solutions, and convince the parties that it is in their best interest to pursue  them.  And in doing so, we need to remember the experiences of Akbar Ali Khan and Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury.

(Crossposted at UV).

One of the coolest people I met at the BDI Conference at Kennedy School a few days ago was Lawrence Lifschultz, whose Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution should be a must read for anyone interested in the country’s politics, governance, and history.  Without necessarily accepting its normative/prescriptive judgment, it is easily one of the best positive/descriptive account of what happened in Bangladesh in 1975. 

At the risk of sounding heretical, 1975, not 1971, is the pivotal year for Bangladesh — Forum’s Zafar Sobhan once told me.  1971 is settled history.  The important issue of war crimes trial notwithstanding, there is no political division over 1971 — no one is really anti-1971, no one says Bangladesh should become East Pakistan.  The division is, or has been for much of the past 3 decades, over the direction a sovereign Bangladesh should take, with 1975 providing the crossroads.  How one interpretes 1975, who one considers to be the heroes and villains of that blood-stained year, have been the key determinants of one’s politics until recently.

 Last September, two prominent Bangladeshi political scientists echoed these points in back-to-back interviews to Prothom Alo.  There is much that the professors predicted right.  And there is some that they missed.  I thought it would be a good idea to revisit these interviews a year on. 

Talukder Maniruzzaman gave the first interview.  He notes the following:

• Our future is a limping democracy.
• 1/11 achieved nothing except for increased militarisation of the country.
• Our political faultline revolves around India.  BNP is the anti-Indian party, majority of Bangladeshis are anti-Indian, therefore the electoral field is tilted in BNP’s favour.

Harun-Ar-Rashid followed, with these key points:

• In addition to India, the fact that the anti-Awami politics in Bangladesh directly benefited from 15 August massacre has been a dividing factor.
• While 1/11 didn’t achieve much institutionally, at a personal level many politicians drew lessons from it.
• AL’s better record at office at least partially off set the India factor.

The regular reader would know that this blog does not believe 1/11 achieved much.  And this post isn’t about that anyway.  Instead, let’s focus on the broad political divisions — India and 15 August —highlighted by the two professors. 

The point both academics make is this: until Aug 1975, there was an unpopular pro-Indian regime in power, through coups and countercoups, an anti-Indian coalition emerged and came to dominate electoral politics, and because this coalition benefited from the Aug 1975 massacre, those who supported the pre-1975 regime could never trust the post-1975 coalition. 

Prof Maniruzzaman rather dramatically wagered 100 taka on a BNP victory, claiming that the India factor trumps everything else.  Of course he got it wrong.  

Why?  

One thing they both miss is the impact of the generation that was born after the guns of 1975 fell silent.   First-timer voters made up 23% of total voters in Dec 2008.  For simplicity, let’s assume that they made up about a quarter of all votes cast (we know that they turned out heavily) and the rest of the 75% voted pretty much same way as they did in 2001 — ie both AL and BNP would have received about 30% votes, with BNP’s alliance giving it an edge.  What was the final tally?  AL 49% (plus 8% allies) against BNP 33% (plus 4% allies).  That is, the young voters broke decisively for AL. 

I have discussed why AL won here (Syeed Ahamed provides a more detailed analysis here).  The point to note here is that India or 1975 don’t divide the new voters, bulk of whom don’t even have any memory of the 1970s. 

The majority of these voters voted against their family trend in this election.  This means that AL cannot take these voters for granted.  Having voted nouka against their elders’ preferences in Dec 2008, they could easily switch their preference to someone else in early 2014.  AL will have to earn their vote next time — dynastic loyalty will not do.

And BNP should learn that harping on about India won’t work.  It will need to demonstrate why AL’s approach is not working and what it will do differently.  Only that will actually deliver the younger voters to dhaner sheesh.  And let me stress what it will do differently bit — merely we’re not AL won’t be enough, not voting / voting no are perfectly valid alternative to voting nouka.  BNP will also have to earn their vote. 

What divides us then?  India and 1975 divided people who remember the 1970s, people who have a living memory of not being Bangladeshi.  In the coming years, these issues will not divide us any more.  As we say good bye to all that, we will be divided on how we think the government of Sheikh Hasina Wazed is doing, and what we believe the alternatives are.

There are 192 countries in the United Nations.  Many of their leaders attend the General Assemby every September.  This year has been noted for the first UNGA speech by President Obama.  The Bangladeshi Prime Minister also gave a speech.  As has been noted, Bangladeshi media chose to focus on the speech being in Bangla, even though that’s routine for the country’s heads of government.  This post focuses on what she actually said. 

About 20 para, of which only about half that the world is interested in, of which only one that actually made a strong argument.  Madam Prime Minister, next time do better.

Here is the full text of the speech.  The PM begins with thanking the Session Chair and the UN Secretary General, before mentioning Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s speech in 1974.  Then she claims something strange — apparently Bangladesh had been under ‘unconstitutional rule’ for most of the time between the August 1975 massacre and the December 2008 election, with the exception of some period in the 1990s.   This is followed by reference to Vision 2021, Digital Bangladesh, and the Shonar Bangla dreamt by the father of the nation.

This stuff takes about 3-4 paragraph.  The following 4 or so paras refer to all the great things the government has been pursuing, or her previous government achieved.  Health, education, poverty alleviation — progress is being made in all fronts.

That’s about eight whole paras on stuff that better fits a Paltan Maidan stump speech than the UN General Assembly.   What does the world care about the Awami League’s Vision 2021?

It’s not until a third of the speech that there is anything that the global community is remotely interested in to hear from Bangladesh.  It’s in the 9th and 10th para that the PM mentions food security.  And how does she do this?  The first para is again ‘our government has done a lot’.   Right towards the end of this section does she mention what Bangladesh needs from the world: end of rich world subsidy on agricultural products.  And she doesn’t even mention biofuels that wrecked havoc in the world food market a few years ago!  Nor does she mention that it is imperative for Bangladesh that the global rice market remains open.

The following four paras, on climate change, easily should have been the crux of the PM’s speech.  Bangladesh is one of the most affected nations.  It is also a large developing/emerging economy.  Currently, the global stand off on climate change policy is revolved around who should foot the bill.  The Southern countries say it’s the rich world that has got us into this mess, so they should pay.  The Northern countries say it’s the large emerging economies that are currently doing the most pollution, so these coutries will need to do the heavy lifting.  Bangladesh, as both a large victim as well as a major emerging country, can/should play the role of an honest broker between the North and South.  There is no reason why the PM can’t be a mediator between the US President / British PM and their Chinese and Indian counterparts. 

But our PM won’t be playing any such role. 

Why? 

Because she wasted half the speech aimed at her domestic constituency, instead of launching into climate change straight away.  And even when she did get around to it, she didn’t say anything particularly forceful or memorable.  The world seems to have completely ignored what she had to say.

Contrast this with the Maldives president’s speech, which was picked up by the major western media such as the Washington Post.  And rightly so: We cannot make Copenhagen a pact for suicides — that’s powerful stuff.  Did anyone in the Prime Minister’s Office take notice?

Then she spoke about the global recession.  Again, what should have been key messages — plights of migrant workers for example — seemed to have been in passing.

Comparatively, the para on the UN peacekeeping mission, which came next, was crisp and concise.  We provide the foot soldiers, therefore our generals should get a sit at the table.  Clear, coherent, strong argument.  One wonders why the rest of the speech wasn’t like this.

The penultimate para urged for the UN to adopt Bangla as an official language.  Now, leaving emotions aside, what is the probability of this?  Next to nothing.  Why then bother with this? 

At least with his claims that ’swine flu’ was cooked up by ‘evil western scientists’, Gaddafi provided entertainment value.

The first, and so far only, opinion poll on the performance of Bangladesh’s current government’s performance found law and order to be the area of its greatest weakness.  That was in April.  Casual observation of the media — newspapers as well as TV news and talk shows — suggest the law and order has slided a lot further in the months since.  Anecdotal evidence from friends and family support the view.  Syeed Ahamed puts it this way:

Such social disorder contradicts the whole purpose of having a national government. Citizens elect a group of persons among themselves as the government of the country so that law and order is maintained. It is perceived as a “social contract” between the people and the government, implying that the people give up some rights to the government in order to receive social order. Most historical accounts suggest this as the reason of establishing states and affirm that the principal task of the government is to maintain law and order. Issues such as taxation, budget, development works, and poverty reduction came much later as other government duties.

And the government’s reaction — return of the ‘crossfire’ under a new name — suggests that it is taking the problem seriously. 

When one starts thinking about the issue, the following points/questions stand out:

1. Crossfires aka encounters aka gunfights aka extrajudicial killings are clear violation of Awami League’s election pledge.

2. It’s not even clear that we have a violent crimes problem that require such drastic measures.

3. The real law and order problem has no quick fix. 

1. Crossfires are back.

Back in February Jalal Alamgir wrote:

In its election manifesto, AL has promised to stop extra-judicial killings. But it won’t be easy to rein back the security forces who, over the last seven years, have honed their aptitude for abusing power. AL’s leadership must send the message clearly that these killings will not be tolerated, and it must prosecute any offense fully.

According to Prothom Alo, 63 people had been killed summarily by RAB  died in crossfires encounters gun fights with RAB.  And this number doesn’t include the BDR jawans who die mysteriously in custody.  Syeed Ahmed of Ain o Salish Kendra documents how the current home and justice ministers echo Lutfuzzaman Babar and Moudud Ahmed. 

2.  Do we need drastic measures?

Government ministers tell us that there is no extrajudicial killing, that law enforcement only fires back under attack.  And pro-government pundits (under both the current and the last elected one) tell us that this kind of drastic measure is needed to curb crime.  At least in Dhaka, anecdotally I found RAB and crossfire to be quite popular among the proverbial ‘ordinary citizens’.  The basic argument is: we have a serious violent crime problem, and shooting a few of these criminals is the only way get on top of the situation.

Is there something to this claim?  How do we know that we have a serious problem that requires state-sponsored murders?

According to the Home Minister, there were 2,279 murders in the first 8 months of the year.  At this rate, we will see about 3,420 murders in the year.  According to the UN, Bangladesh has a population of 162.221 million.  That translates into 2.1 murders per 100,000 people.  If wikipedia is to be believed, this down from 2.6 in 2006, and is lower than our neighbouring countries.

I suspect the murder rate is underreported.  I suspect many cases are not filed because the victims simply don’t have any faith on the justice system.  But I don’t believe that such distrust or underreporting is unique to Bangladesh. 

Here is another metric.  According to the World Bank Development Indicators database, less than 0.1% of sales were lost ‘theft, robbery, vandalism, and arson’ in 2007.  In that year, over 10% of sales were lost due to electrical outtage.

Based on the available data, I am not sure we have a significantly drastic or deteriorating violent crimes problem that require extrajudicial killing to solve.

3. The real problem is elsewhere.

Someone with on-the-ground experience in small business in Bangladesh told me this:

Our problems are petty crimes … such as extortion, religious repression, mugging … which are big deterrents to economic security.  Small businessmen cannot invest — they are forced out by thugs and extortionists, unhealthy monopolies and oligopolies.  Cold storages do not get built because powerful thugs do no want them — since they want to take advantage of low supply and artificial control of supply.  A parallel distribution channel cannot be created because the thugs control many of the truck networks.  There are numerous of these everyday problems that we, the city-dwellers, do not know about and researchers do not write about — but these are the problems that make surviving in Bangladesh so difficult. These are the reasons why people beat a petty thief to death on the streets, why common people hail an unconstitutional body as RAB.

Someone else with law enforcement experience told me that outside the cities, land dispute is a major reason for murder. 

A fellow blogger, and a staunch opponent of 1/11, wrote this:

If I could, I’d talk to businessmen of different-sized establishments: people with shops in Elephant Road or Rapa Plaza, people who runs industries in Tejgaon, and maybe, if possible, some of our FBCCI-sized tycoons.  These are the people who are the first victims of political crime.  People come to them ask for extortions in different ways: in person and through cell phones.  And these are people who are energetic and optimistic by nature, so if they start spewing tales of doom and gloom on you, you’ll know things really are that bad.

Is there a quickfire, silver bullet solution to this?  I cannot think of any way but the long hard slog of institution building so that the rule of law can get established.  Yes, this will take years.  No, there is no getting around to that.

(Update 15 Oct: according to Naya Diganta, reported crime has fallen since 2007.)

The Bangladeshi Foreign Minister recently visited India, and the Prime Minster is supposed to visit New Delhi shortly.  This follows a highly publicised visit by the Indian Foreign Minister in February, after the new government took office in Dhaka, but before the Indian election.  There are media speculations about a ‘package deal’ being negotiated resolve various outstanding issues. 

There is no foreign relationship more important for Bangladesh than that with India.  Therefore, whatever is in this deal (if a deal is indeed being negotiated), it is imperative that it is scrutinised carefully.  And every conscious citizen — regardless of technical expertise, political affiliation, or access to the media — has a responsibility to participate in the discussion.  Indeed, a discussion needs to happen in India too, because if Bangladesh develops a permanent antipathy towards India, the consequences will be bad for everyone.

Any discussion on this topic should begin with two points.  

First, this need not be a zero sum game.  Bangladesh’s gains do not have to come at India’s expense, or vice versa.  India and Bangladesh are not locked in some Manichean, existential conflict.  Win-win solutions are possible on all the issues.

Second, it is easy, and pointless, to spend endless amount of time in a dialogue of the deaf discussing how one country has never done the right thing by the other. 

This post is an attempt to summarise the issues, with some tentative views.  They are by no means exhaustive.  Nor are they beyond debate.  In fact, I am actively soliciting debate.

With the long introduction out of the way, over the fold are what I think the issues that need to be resolved.

1. Water

The issue appears to be well understood.  There is a finite amount of water in the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system, the rivers run across international boundary, what happens upstream affects downstream, India is upstream and Bangladesh is downstream, and so forth.  Tipaimukh is the latest manifestation of the issue (see Akbar Ali Khan’s Prothom Alo series: here, here, here, here, and here).

The solution is an equitable distribution of water.  But what does that mean?  Diganta tries to answer.  My view is that the the answer will vary from case to case, with each specific upstream project requiring separate negotiation.   

There is a long-standing Indian proposal to link Ganges and Brahmaputra over Bangladeshi territory.  Not only will this bi-furcate Bangladesh, my understanding is that the Indian proposal will leave both ends of the canal in Indian territory.  This appears to be an extremely bad idea for Bangladesh.  Short of this, every option should be on the table, with specifics negotiated by technocrats from both sides.

2. Security

There is a strong perception in India that Bangladesh may pose a threat to India’s territorial integrity or national security.  Some believe that Bangladesh has actively assisted Indian militants — mainly separatists in the Northeastern states, but also Naxalites and jihadis.  There is a perceieved fear of India in Bangladesh too, where some still fear that India still wants to undo partition. 

Bangladesh ought to be make it explicitly clear that she has no territorial design on India.  Except for a few enclaves, Bangladesh has no territorial dispute with India (unlike Pakistan or China).  Bangladesh has nothing to gain by supporting any militant group in India.  As an aside, Bangladeshi politicians referring to the Indian militants as ‘freedom fighters’ do a gross disservice to the country because they know very well that these are not Bangladesh’s fights. 

These perceptions — often unreasonable — are exploited by demagogues in both sides, and as a result, the real security problem of decaying state machinery — not just in Bangladesh, but also in India — is seldom highlighted. 

Let me give you an example.  After the Pilkhana tragedy, for a long while, large parts of Bangladesh’s borders were undefended.  But undefended against whom?  The Indians?  Except for a few kilometres in nearly 2,000km border, India doesn’t want Bangladeshi real estate.  The threat here is not the Indian BSF will come and take our land.  The threat here is that criminals from both sides of the border had a free run.  The threat here is that Indian militants from the Northeast had a free passage to link up with jihadis and Naxalites in West Bengal and Bihar. 

BDR-BSF joint patrols are a good way to mitigate this security threat, but tell that to the Bangladeshi Indophobes, who’d rather recreate the Battle of Khem Karan at Benapole. 

More generally, strengthening state institutions is in Bangladesh’s own interest, regardless of how these may or may not help India.  But India has a responsibility too.  India’s militancy problems have deep domestic roots.  If Indian Muslims are attracted to violent jihad, clearly the Indian state and society is failing in some key ways (see here). 

India  and Bangladesh face common security threats from militants.  It makes sense to work for a common solution to the problem.  But it’s not clear that the current Bangladesh government’s idea of a Joint Force is the right approach.  The militancies are rooted in social and economic problems, and it’s not clear that joint forces escalating the conflicts will achieve anything.  But these discussions cannot be had so long as the perceived threats dominate the discourse.

3. Migration

India claims that there are millions of Bangladeshis living illegally in India.  And Bangladesh vehemently denies it.  But anyone who has travelled in any Indian city will know the truth in the Indian claim, and it will be pretty clear to them that the Indian official position of ‘push back’ is a ridiculous notion.  Whether as a rickshawallah in Delhi, cook in Mumbai, or a construction worker in Hyderabad, Bangladeshi workers contribute to the growing affluence of the Indian urban middle class. 

Isn’t it about time that this ugly little not-so-secret fact is openly discussed? 

4. Border killings

The single most important reason why we need to openly discuss the movement of people across the Indo-Bangla border is because of the cold blooded murder of hundreds of people by the trigger happy Indian Border Security Forces.   

The question is, what can we do to stop them?

Unlike water or security issues, private citizens actually can make a big difference here.  India has vocal and influential citizens’ movements.  Media is free.  It is, therefore, very much possible to build up a grassroot pressure against these killings.

5. Trade

This is usually highlighted a lot in the Bangladeshi media.  But as I argued here, trade trade deficit per se is not the issue.  We buy Indian goods because it is efficient.  If anything, we will be in trouble if India arbitrarily shuts off trade — India was one of the first countries to impose export ban on rice in 2007, leading to sharp spikes in rice prices.  We are a densely populated country, so there is no way we will be self sufficient in everything.  And self sufficiency — autarky — is an inefficient outcome anyway (this is not the place to get into the economics of comparative advantage). 

The point is not trade deficit, the point is market access.  Bangladeshi market is open for Indian business, and Bangladeshi consumers benefit from it.  But the Indian market is largely close to Bangladesh.  This need to change. 

6. Connectivity aka transit/transhipment/corridor

Among the Bangladeshi Indophobes, it’s an article of faith that allowing Indian goods/people to travel between West Bengal and northeastern states over Bangladeshi territory is a bad idea.  But why is it a bad idea?  If we take away the presumption that these countries are locked in a zero sum existential conflict (which I don’t believe to be the case), is there really any good reason to deny India transit? 

I don’t think there is any.  I think the argument really isn’t about whether transit should be allowed.  It should be.  The debate really need to be on what terms.

It would seem to me that reciprocal connectivity with Nepal, China and Pakistan should be a key part of any transit agreement.  If Chittagong port is opened to Indian northeast, there is no reason why it can’t be in principle open to China (through Myanmar perhaps). 

And just as the Indophobes can demagogue on this issue, we need to be aware of the Indophiles overselling transit.  If we don’t allow India transit, we will not be at a major loss.  Bangladesh seems to have done reasonably well without ‘connectivity’.  None of our manifold problems — decaying state machinery, infrastructure bottleneck, poor education/health services — will be solved by transit. 

The bottomline: there is no reason to deny transit, but it’s not a priority.

It was amazing at the local mall last night.  I had no idea my little town was home to so many Muslim families.  My wife quipped, they should give Ramadan sale.  I’m sure in a few years, they will. 

I have just come back from the chand raat at the local Islamic Centre.  I’ve never felt the spirit of the Eid — ঈদ ঈদ লাগা — this much outside Dhaka. 

It’s not quite watching BTV, but close enough.

Eid Mubarak.

The IMF has recently offered Bangladesh a $700m soft facility to assist with the  impact of the global economic downturn.  According to media reports, Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman said: ”We received an e-mail from the IMF … saying it had decided to give the loan assistance to help Bangladesh face the adverse affects of the global economic downturn, and boost the economy.”  The central bank is reported to have received the money earlier this month. 

This post summarises some thoughts on the issue. 

Firstly, Bangladesh’s GDP is about $87b, so this is a rather sizeable loan.   Was this requested by Bangladesh Bank, or the IMF became kind and saw an opportunity to shovel down a huge loan?

I am not reflexively opposed to borrowing from IMF.  We have a budget deficit that needs to be financed, and if the IMF loan helps keep the interest rate or inflation down, then why not?

• Positive: We mentioned in the budget analysis that the government may end up facing a double trouble by financing the budget deficit through high-rate loans which will at the end increase the expenditure in the subsequent years. A low-interest rate loan may help the government finance that deficit without worsening the situation much.  Also, it will help the government spend on those programs that most stimulates the economy.
• Negative: Since it’s a lot of money, the government may get tempted to spend more on on block allocation  programs, raising risks of beef-barrelling. Plus, Bangladesh’s experience with global recession was not too bad, so an overzealous stimulus may jeopardise the monetary situation by boosting inflation and increase debt. 

This leads me to my next question.   It’s not the government that’s borrowing.  It’s the central bank.  Will the Bangladesh Bank then lend this money to the government?  What is the mechanism here?  The government will issue new bonds?  Or will BB buy government bonds from existing markets, driving up its price and lowering the interest rate?  Wouldn’t it have been less risky (for inflation) if the IMF gave the money directly to the government?  Or am I missing something here?

And if not for financing the deficit, why does the central bank need the loan?  BB has a lot of reserve (left chart), taka is not under threat (right chart), and there is no immediate sign of a balance of payment / current account crisis.

What’s going on here?

Watching Inglourious Basterds — Quentin Tarantino’s Spaghetti Western set in the Nazi-occupied Europe — reignited one of my longstanding daydreams: a big screen epic on Bangladesh’s Liberation War.  I wrote last year about various logistical difficulties of making an epic movie on the Liberation War.  Keeping those issues in mind, I think it is still possible to write a reasonable script.  This post outlines some ideas. 

We limit the movie largely to an urban setting.  While limiting the scope — by setting it in Dhaka (then Dacca), we are not showing the massive population displacements, missing one of the biggest dimensions of the War — this allows us to make a lot more tractable movie.  

This also gives us more scope to explore other dimensions of the War.  Let me stress that I want to make a War movie.  Therefore, I want sequences of actual combat.  In the occupied city, such combat was in the form of guerilla actions by the Mukti Bahini.  And those actions will have a prominent role in the movie. 

In fact, the movie’s very first chapter will be on this.  Titled ‘…strike terror in their hearts…’, this is the only part of the movie set outside the city.  We will begin in Melaghar, India — the head quarter of Major Khaled Musharraf.  Major Khaled is raising a number of crack guerilla units to carry out high profile operations in the occupied city.  The aim is to raise the profile of the resistance in the world media, and at the same time, strike terror at the hearts of Pakistani occupation forces. 

This is actually quite factual.  Major Khaled did train guerilla units that carried out bomb attack in Hotel Intercontinental (now Sheraton), blew up Siddhirganj power station, assassinated key collaborators (including former East Pakistan Governor Monem khan), or engaged the Pakistanis in gun battles (one at Farmgate, described in Jahanara Imam’s Ekatturer Dinguli).  

Guerillas involved in these actions were men who knew the city very well (typically students/teachers of Dhaka University/BUET/Dhaka College/Medical etc).  Azam Khan the rock singer, late Shahadat Chowdhury of Bichitra, or Rumi Imam (Jahanara Imam’s martyred son) are examples.  One of our key characters — Babul Chowdhury — is one of the guerillas.  And it is when his name comes up for consideration at Major Khaled’s head quarters that we move to the second chapter: ‘…stop this empty rhetoric of nationalism…’.

Babul is a young Dhaka University teacher and a leftist intellectual who, as late as March 1971, thinks Sheikh Mujib is an agent of the CIA, that the Bangladesh movement will strengthen Indian hegemony and weaken the prospect of a China-backed people’s revolution, the only way to freedom.  Babul is a fine orator, with a cult following among his students, despite his views being completely at odds with the prevailing zeitgeist. 

Babul Chowdhury is based on a side character from Sunil Gangopadhyaya’s Purba Paschim.  He is fictional, but there were many like him in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Babul Chowdhury’s misdiagnosis of the political issues facing the country is a big part of the story of the Bangladeshi left’s continuous march to self-inflicted oblivion. 

So, in the second chapter of the movie, we see Babul Chowdhury arguing his case in a political adda.  We also see him hobnob with a Pakistani army officer.  And we get a sense of the mood of the city in the fateful weeks leading up to the 25 March massacre.  It is that massacre that will cause Babul to join the war. 

(to be continued)